Talk:Sam Rayburn
Ok, I'm trying something with the PODs in the title of the sub-section. One more step to try to cut down on hit and run editing. Opinions? TR 01:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC) :Might work, though hit-and-runs seem to have gone down quite a bit since we started the intro blurbs. Turtle Fan 03:11, 23 December 2008 (UTC) :::Did you see the Heydrich edits from 12/22/2008? TR 16:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC) ::It might help but it will also mean changing all links since the title is changed. ML4E 04:21, 23 December 2008 (UTC) :::Ah, I didn't think of the links. :::Perhaps placing the POD in a sub-heading would do it. TR 15:45, 23 December 2008 (UTC) :::Ok, just tried that, didn't like the "look". TR 16:17, 23 December 2008 (UTC) Rayburn in line of succession Actually, at that time in history, the Secretary of State was next in line after VP. That law, enacted in 1886, wasn't changed until 1947, OTL. So Hull was correctly the next president once FDR and Wallace were dead. TR 18:04, 14 February 2009 (UTC) :He speaks the truth. Unless Congress decided, in the middle of the war against the Lizards, that it might be a good time to tinker with succession order. Turtle Fan 19:41, 14 February 2009 (UTC) :Come to think of it, Rayburn might not even have been alive in this timeline. He might not have survived the bombing of Washington. According to Hull, the executive branch escaped intact but quite a few "congress-critters" didn't make it. Turtle Fan 19:42, 14 February 2009 (UTC) Blimey! Looking at the successionbox, seeing how Rayburn and Martin kept alternating the office back and forth, reminds me a bit of certain nineteenth-century Prime Ministers of the UK. Turtle Fan 15:04, June 7, 2010 (UTC) :I had a similar thought. I think the fact that they did swap a couple of time is Evidence! of planned sequels to MwIH. Because HT just has to address that. TR 18:10, June 7, 2010 (UTC) ::You know, I had thought earlier that the politics of MwIH might soon be taking a surprising turn. The election's a year away and in political terms that's an eternity. If the Nazis do take control of West Germany, Truman gets to spend the whole campaign saying "I told you so! I TOLD you so!!! But you had to listen to these malcontented housewives who were dumber than a bag of doorknobs and their scumbag opportunist Congressional sops. And now we have to beat the Nazis all over again. Now who do you want to lead you through that war? The very morons who pulled defeat from the jaws of victory? I think not!" ::Or maybe the Nazis will lie low until the US elects an isolationist. I doubt it. For one thing, they don't seem to understand much about American politics. For another, they wouldn't want to let whomever is running the West German government gain any traction. But even if they do, political emphasis will swing back to domestic policy, and Truman's got a year to seize the high ground in those debates. I always got the feeling that many of the anti-war people--who could remember shivering around smoldering newspapers in trash barrels after the heat to their tenements got cut because their Public Assistance check hadn't come through in time--felt vaguely dirty to be aligning with the GOP. Turtle Fan 19:10, June 7, 2010 (UTC) :::I've had similar thoughts. Nazism is aggressive by its nature, and even a staunch isolationist would have to pause once the swastikas started unfurling. Conversely, patience is not a particularly strong virtue. Obviously, when there was a specific goal, the GFF did just fine. But once the Nazis started running the show in West Germany, you know that rearming and looking east again is going to happen in pretty short order. They'd never be content with half the German people under communist Slavs. ::::You know, the once-popular war in Afghanistan is starting to face serious opposition despite (well, because of, but despite works for our purposes) Taliban resurgence. If HT feels as strongly about that as he appears to have felt about Iraq, isolationists remaining inexplicably glib in the face of Nazi resurgence might allow him a heavy-handed sequel to his most political novel. I doubt it, though; I think he'd start fresh. Turtle Fan 23:09, June 7, 2010 (UTC) :::And that will give the US and the UK something think about. France will almost certainly tighten up with the USSR. De Gaulle had little use for the Anglosphere in OTL, and he's been basically proven right. Moreover, the USSR would have solid justification for pushing into the West if Germany starts saber-rattling. TR 20:12, June 7, 2010 (UTC) ::::I think it goes without saying that the US and UK handed France to the USSR when they withdrew. And, infuriatingly, France was right to do so, thanks to the US leadership having been written to be so self-defeating. ::::The USSR was interested in taking up the Anglos' occupation zones at the end of MwIH, and only the US's nuclear monopoly has deterred them. Presumably the US has some sort of agreement with the West German government to defend them with nuclear weapons. If the Nazis oust and replace the West German government, would the US abrogate the treaty? Sticking with it means nothing less than being an ally of the Nazis. ::::Actually, the isolationists might be more likely to abrogate than the interventionists would. Absent fear of nuclear war, the Soviets would immediately waltz into West Germany and beat Peiper like a rented mule before he and his party had a chance to get their sea legs. Then they tell the voters "See? No monsters in the closet, no Nazis in power. Go back to bed, children." The Brits would get their knickers in a twist but I really don't know what they could do about it. ::::Interventionists, on the other hand, might give even a Nazi-ruled West Germany just enough support to give Europe a viable alternative to Stalinist domination. Playing that game requires making foreign policy a priority so they'd be much more likely than the isolationists to have the stomach for it. If it doesn't backfire. There's a real danger that the voters will paint them as hypocrites for propping up the Nazis they'd used as bogeymen for keeping the occupation going. ::::Of course, if you read George Friedman--which is at the very least an interesting and worthwhile pursuit--he'd argue, fairly convincingly if you ask me, that if a Eurasian power ever had a clear shot at dominating the world island, the American body politic, and especially any politician who understood the body politic well enough to ascend to high office, would automatically be willing to do whatever was necessary to keep them from finishing the trick. Turtle Fan 23:09, June 7, 2010 (UTC) WW section I couldn't remember this scene at all, and there is a reason--Jonathan quoted from the HC edition. However, when the novel was released in PB (the format in which I read the book), several errors were corrected. HT himself even wrote a quick "thank you" to the readers who caught those unspecified errors. One such error is the Rayburn reference. The PB has Groves ruminating on Cordell Hull being Roosevelt's successor, not Rayburn. So I think we have to change the WW section for Rayburn into a literary comment explaining the HC edition. Or delete altogether, as the PB is now the corrected official canon. TR (talk) 03:36, March 30, 2016 (UTC) :I think the older, inaccurate edition makes an interesting anecdote. On this same character, there is a passage explaining how Rayburn was retconned out of Joe Steele, so this fits the same theme. This makes me wish HT would fix his problems more often.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 05:26, March 30, 2016 (UTC) The Hot War His status at the end of Fallout is another tantalizingly unanswered question. HT has an annoying habit of leaving out important information just when it would be useful.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 06:34, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :True, that is a rather intriguing question mark. Turtle Fan (talk) 07:21, September 27, 2016 (UTC) ::We're probably safe to assume he's dead. Not having enough Reps for a quorum is a good sign. Not addressing his fairly recent addition to the line of succession is another. Don't need to alter the article, though. TR (talk) 14:31, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :::The lack of quorum, aside from being problematic (as mentioned elsewhere, the House has standing rules that automatically adjust the definition of a quorum downward to take into account vacant seats) could only cause a 50/50 chance that he's gone. However, a member of the congressional leadership is much more likely to be in the capital on a given night than any other member, which drops his chances of survival significantly; and while the story is filled with people who've survived having their cities hit, the lack of mention that he's in the line of succession is indeed ominous. ::::In some further fairness, as Truman notes, getting the House up to full strength is probably going to be a matter of 48 governors looking at their best friends, picking out the most competent, and sending them to wherever the provisional capital will be (oh, hey, another U.S. capital), so even with the rules in place, getting it up to the quorum level is probably going to be a comparatively easy task. ::::But back to Rayburn. Obviously, HT left himself wiggle room by telling us there were survivors, but not naming them. So Rayburn could have made a trip out of the blast zone at the right time. TR (talk) 03:05, September 28, 2016 (UTC) :::If he is alive, he might be a relatively attractive candidate for the next election, assuming it's a 1788-style no-campaigning indirect election. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:10, September 28, 2016 (UTC) ::::Ah, I had not given that much thought. Rayburn sure seemed to like being Speaker, though. Would he be willing to throw in, even in the non-campaign model? TR (talk) 03:05, September 28, 2016 (UTC) :::::He liked being Speaker of the House; is he going to like being Speaker of the Haunted House? (I'm inordinately proud of that one.) Even if the House can get back up to fighting strength, it's still going to be a rump body, so the role of its leader will be greatly diminished. :::::Also, while it's impossible to say definitively at this point, there are many scenarios in which the need for various governors to fill vacancies could result in a Republican majority. ::::::I had a similar thought. I'm really not keen on reviewing the party affiliation of the 45 or so governors we can safely presume are still alive, however. I imagine Utah and Colorado have new ones by now, although HT didn't address that issue. Massachusetts will have to get a new governor before they can start repopulating their House delegation. :::::::I Googled "List of governors in 1952" and came up blank, and decided I had no interest in tracing four dozen separate lists back that far, especially since it still wouldn't tell us everything we need to know, not knowing which seats are vacant. :::::::Also, as to the three states you mention: Reasonable basis to start speculating, but governors don't spend all their time in state capitals, and even if they did, the bombs in this war aren't powerful enough to make it a sure bet that few if any people in the cities they've hit survived. The hydrogen bomb would change that, of course. (Hmm--We're going to need another POV in an American bomber crew to cover that if it happens, and McNulty is the only choice, isn't he. Poor old Daisy's chances of surviving the cliff from which she's hanging suddenly look a lot worse.) Turtle Fan (talk) 05:47, September 28, 2016 (UTC) :::::And finally, the early indirect elections to which we're comparing this possibility featured men who badly wanted to be president being constrained by etiquette to pretend they weren't really interested in the presidency but would accept it if their compatriots insisted. In this case pretense might be reality. The burdens facing an incoming president have never been greater, and while unprecedented executive powers might attract the ambitious (again, I really wish McCarthy were still in the story) even ruling over a skeleton government with an iron fist will offer only the most limited perks. If the presidency is so unattractive, saying "No thanks, I like the job I have" might be seen as a sign of selfishness and dereliction of duty rather than of modesty. And my read on Rayburn is that, in the end, he would not indulge in such things during so severe a crisis. Turtle Fan (talk) 04:44, September 28, 2016 (UTC) ::::::That does describe Rayburn reasonably well, from what I can tell. It also applies to Ike and Stevenson, really. Re:McCarthy and someone with naked ambition--you know, Nixon isn't officially dead yet, either... TR (talk) 05:07, September 28, 2016 (UTC) :::::::I'm trying to think of alternatives to the OTL nominees. My criteria are elder statesman types who are well-respected across the aisle and who preferably had some significant involvement in winning WWII. The first two who've come to mind are Rayburn and James Byrnes. The negatives that kept the latter from receiving the Democratic vice-presidential nomination still apply, but people may not care so much in the midst of an existential crisis. :::::::Nixon on his worst day was still in the nursery compared with McCarthy, and those who've narrowly dodged the McCarthyist bullet (even at so terrible a cost) will know it. Suggesting otherwise would be like saying that, for instance, Marco Rubio would have been just as dangerous a nominee as Trump. Sure, they're both nativists with who would rather stonewall than work across the aisle, but come on! :::::::And as a literary villain, McCarthy's even harder to replace. Turtle Fan (talk) 05:47, September 28, 2016 (UTC) ::::::::It's most reasonable to assume that Rayburn is dead, though HT seems to have not made up his mind yet when he wrote the end of FO.JonathanMarkoff (talk) 08:33, September 28, 2016 (UTC)